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Religious believers are no more generous than atheists – at least as long as they don’t know what the recipient believes in. Finding this out increases generosity significantly, mainly because people give more to those who share their religion. This is the conclusion of a study carried out in Sweden, the USA, Egypt and Lebanon by researchers at Linköping University, Sweden.
Nathalie Hallin is an atheist. Her colleague Hajdi Moche is a Christian. They both have a postdoc position at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping. Together they wanted to find out if a religious belief makes a person more generous, which research has so far disagreed on and they themselves have discussed a lot.
To find the answer, together with their co-authors Gerhard Andersson and Daniel, they have carried out three studies: one in Sweden, one in the USA and a combined one in Egypt and Lebanon. The results are published in the journal Judgement and Decision Making.
The Swedish study included 398 people. These were given the task of distributing fictitious money between themselves and three hypothetical recipients over six rounds. They then answered questions about religious affiliation and political beliefs, but also about things such as favourite hobby, favourite film genre and the like.
In all rounds, participants were told something about the recipients, for example about hobbies, political conviction or which films they liked. In one of the rounds, information about religion was given. The researchers then examined how the participants’ generosity was affected by what they were told.
In most of the rounds, it turned out that religious and non-religious people gave away the same amount of money. But when they learned about the recipients’ religion, there was a clear difference. Religious believers became more generous than the non-religious participants. This was shown mainly by them giving more money to those of the same faith as themselves. But atheists also proved to favour their own group.
“I was actually surprised because the only thing that unites atheists is that you don’t believe in a god,” says Nathalie Hallin.
Follow-up studies with just over 700 people in the USA and about 600 in Egypt and Lebanon gave the same results: religion was the factor that had the greatest impact on generosity and the participants favoured the group that had the same faith as themselves.
In all three studies, Nathalie Hallin and Hajdi Moche also investigated whether generosity differed between different religions and outlooks on life. The participants were divided into three groups: Christians, Muslims and atheists.
The analysis showed that Muslims in the USA were more generous to their own kind than Christians and atheists were. There were also signs of this in Sweden, but the number of Muslims who participated was too low to say for sure. In Lebanon and Egypt, however, there was no difference in how much Christians and Muslims gave. Whether this is due to different cultural norms, the position of Muslims in American society or something else is uncertain. In Egypt and Lebanon there were too few atheists in the survey to make a comparison.
As researchers, Nathalie Hallin and Hajdi Moche find it interesting that the relationship to religion has such a strong impact on generosity and group feeling but are careful not to evaluate this. According to them, favouring one’s own can be considered unfair, but can, for example, be seen as better than not being generous at all.
“At the same time, you can be generous in different ways. You can be generous with time, with love or with care. So whether there is anything in religion that says you should be generous with money in particular is something to think about anyway,” says Hajdi Moche.
The study was funded by the Swedish Research Council and Linköping University.
Nathalie Hallin, postdoc, the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Sweden: nathalie.hallin@liu.se
Hajdi Moche, postdoc, the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Sweden: hajdi.moche@liu.se
Who is generous and to whom? Generosity among Christians, Muslims, and atheists in the USA, Sweden, Egypt, and Lebanon, N Hallin, H Moche, G Andersson, D Västfjäll, Judgment and Decision Making, published 18 September 2024 https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2024.14
Clay figures by Nathalie Hallin
photo: Linköping University
Hajdi Moche and Nathalie Hallin
photo: Linköping University
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Clay figures by Nathalie Hallin
photo: Linköping University
Hajdi Moche and Nathalie Hallin
photo: Linköping University
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